1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a precipitation gauge. In more particular, the present invention a precipitation gauge in which a rotatable fluid supply unit and a flow rate measuring unit are provided under a precipitation receiving member in order to measure an amount of rain or snow collected in the precipitation receiving member, so that precipitation can be exactly measured, and the flow rate measuring unit can be individually separated, so that check, repair, and replacement works can be easily performed.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, precipitation gauges are measuring units to measure an amount of rain or snow, and include tipping bucket type precipitation gauges, weighting type precipitation gauges, and float type precipitation gauges. Among them, the tipping bucket type gauge in a mechanical structure has been most extensively used around the world.
Regarding the tipping bucket type precipitation gauge, if rain or snow collected in a precipitation receiving member is dropped to a measuring cup and filled by a predetermined amount in the measuring cup, the measuring cup is inclined in one direction while the rain or the snow filled in the measuring cup is discharged to a water collecting container. Simultaneously, a magnetic switch is actuated so that pulses are generated. The above operation is performed by alternating left and right measuring cups and the precipitation is measured by counting the number of generated pulses.
However, according to the tipping bucket type precipitation gauge, in the process of tipping the rain or the snow in the measuring cup, friction is generated due to a mechanical operation to cause errors, and the precision in the measurement of precipitation is degraded due to the errors.
In addition, for the purpose of maintenance, correction, and check works, since complex equipment and a great amount of distilled water are carried to a field, manpower is significantly wasted, and long working time is required. As foreign substances such as insects or sands are collected in the gauge, the gauge may be failed.
Recently, about 2700 precipitation gauges are installed in Korea, and must be corrected every three years in compliance with the law of streams. In addition, since most precipitation gauges are installed in rough mountainous terrains, the maintenance of the gauge is difficult and manpower is wasted.
As a related art, there is provided Korea Utility Model Registration No. 20-0351474 titled “Non-Contact Precipitation Gauge”. The non-contact precipitation gauge includes a precipitation receiving member having a funnel shape to collect precipitation, a quantified drain unit installed in a drain tube provided at a lower end of the precipitation receiving member to move up and down depending on precipitation so that water is drained in a constant amount through the drain tube, a water receiving member to measure the precipitation drained from the drain tube, optical interrupt devices serving as non-contact devices to generate pulses when the water receiving member is conducted, and drain ports to drain out water collected in the water receiving member after the precipitation has been measured.
However, in the above structure, since precipitation is measured after rain or snow has been collected in the measuring cup, rain or snow may remain in the measuring cup when a small amount of rain or snow falls or an amount of rain falling thereafter may be added to a previous precipitation and measured. In addition, the maintenance of the precipitation gauge is still difficult due to the characteristic of a mechanical device.
As another related art, there is provided Korea Patent Registration No. 10-0957242 titled “Precipitation Gauge”. The precipitation gauge includes a precipitation receiving member to collect rain or snow, a measuring cup to contain the rain or the water discharged from the precipitation receiving member and inclined in one direction if the measuring cup is filled with a predetermined amount of rain or water, a pulse generator to generate pulses if the gauge is inclined, a heating part to transfer heat to at least a portion of the precipitation receiving member, a snow detecting part including a conductor electrically shorted through the snow collected in the precipitation receiving member in order to detect the snow, a controller to heat the heating part in order to melt the snow collected in the precipitation receiving member if the snow is detected by the snow detecting part.
The above technology is a measuring scheme based on the mechanical structure, and an error range resulting from the operation of the measuring cup still remains. The snow detecting part detects the snow by the temperature. However, if rain is fallen in the environment, such as winter, that the temperature is dropped, the snow detecting part recognizes the rain as snow to actuate the heating part.
On the contrary, when weather is warm so that a temperature is increased, even though the snow is collected in the precipitation receiving member, the heating part may not be operated.